MANUAL COMMUNICATION

The wind seared her fingers, but Nancy Hayden couldn’t cover them. If she did, how would John know which play to follow?

It was Oct. 29, one of the first cold nights of fall. The Massaponax High School Panthers were playing against the Stafford High School Indians, and Hayden stood on the sideline.

It’s where she feels most at home. Football is different when you’re on the field, she said.

In the bleachers, you watch the game when you feel like it. On the field, you watch to survive unscathed.

She remembers her first game at Massaponax, when a football player tackled her while she wasn’t looking. She won’t make that mistake again.

On this recent Monday she paced the sidelines aligning herself with John Van Wey, No. 64. Whether or not John was looking, her fingers trailed the coach’s words. She buried them in her pockets between plays, lamenting that the heat packs in them didn’t work.

But gloves weren’t an option. They would hamper her movement or, if she chose a color too dark, make her fingers difficult to see.

And John, a 17-year-old varsity football player, relied on her fingers to make his next move. He has been partially deaf since he was 2.

Hayden interprets for hearing-impaired students at Massaponax High School. She also has interpreted for Spotsylvania County Parks and Recreation in the summer.

But before anything else, she said, she was her father’s “first son.”

Hayden attributes her love of sports to her father, Lynn Soaper, with whom she shares a close bond. When she was little, her father chauffeured kids in the county to play sports.

Her father, Hayden said, is the reason she became an interpreter. He is deaf, and she and her family know of his struggles growing up. As a boy he was sent away to school in Staunton and never was home for the holidays. Even at home, he found it hard to communicate.

Signing is her first language, Hayden said. She and her siblings all learned how to talk to their father when they were little.

“He was so put off from the rest of the world when he was young,” she said. “We made him part of the hearing world.”

As an interpreter, she helps make sure no one else feels that isolation.

“Because I was blessed with this skill, I’d like to include deaf people in everything,” she said.

There are 43 hearing-impaired students in Spotsylvania County schools, and Hayden is one of 11 interpreters.

According to Gallaudet University, the number of hearing-impaired people in the U.S.varies depending on who’s collecting data. Gallaudet, a college for the deaf and hard of hearing, states that agencies define deafness differently. Some lump the population together without differentiating between the partially deaf and the completely deaf.

According to 2005 data from the National Center for Health Statistics, there are 36.5 million adults with some type of hearing trouble.

Hayden said her father worked hard to overcome his limitations. At 80, he bowls in the summer. He still chauffeurs people around, these days for Sunday school.

Compared with his early years, he’s more open now, she said. People understand him, and others know his language.

Nancy’s sister, Pat Hudson, said people’s perception about the deaf community has changed. When their father was young, strangers stopped and stared. He didn’t go to church because there was no one to interpret for him.

Now, with schools teaching sign language, more people are aware of the hearing-impaired.

Hayden is just one of many who have dedicated themselves to helping that community, Hudson said.

“With people like her, it gives other kids a chance to be in a normal life,” she said. “It makes the kids feel like they’re more in the same group and not an oddball.”

Thanks to Hayden’s help, football player John has transformed, his parents said. Before attending Massaponax, John was introverted. His classes were solely with other hearing-impaired students.

Here, he’s just like everyone else.

“She is unbelievable,” said John’s mom, Rosa Marie Van Wey, as she watched the game from the bleachers that Monday night. “Johnny loves her.”

On the sideline, John tells Hayden the boys from the other team are twice his size.

“That’s why you have to become stronger,” Hayden tells him. “You need to eat.”

“I do eat!” he replies, smiling.

The two have worked together since John was a freshman. For his senior year, he has requested her as his interpreter.

He jokes about taking Hayden with him to college, where he might play football or study medicine.

At halftime, the Panthers are in the lead.

Outside the locker room, the coach goes over plays on a dry-erase board, and the players crouch around him. John’s focus wavers between Hayden and the board.

When the players stand, they tower over her.

On her tiptoes, Hayden signs over their heads, in case John happens to be looking in her direction.